VISUAL AND AUDIO PRESENTATION IN MACHINE PROGRAMED INSTRUCTION. FINAL REPORT.

ALLEN, WILLIAM H.

THIS STUDY WAS PART OF A LARGER RESEARCH PROGRAM AIMED TOWARD DEVELOPMENT OF PARADIGMS OF MESSAGE DESIGN. OBJECTIVES OF THREE PARALLEL EXPERIMENTS WERE TO EVALUATE INTERACTIONS OF PRESENTATION MODE, PROGRAM TYPE, AND CONTENT AS THEY AFFECT LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS. EACH EXPERIMENT USED 18 TREATMENTS IN A FACTORIAL DESIGN WITH RANDOMLY SELECTED GROUPS OF ABOUT 400 GRADE 8 STUDENTS EACH. AUDIO PRESENTATION MODES WERE--SILENT, REDUNDANT, DIRECTIVE. VISUAL MODES WERE--PRINTED VERBAL, STILL GRAPHIC, MOTION PICTURE. PROGRAMS WERE LINEAR AND BRANCHING. PROGRAM CONTENT (ON THE SUBJECT "CRYSTALLOGRAPHY") INVOLVED NON-CONCRETE REFERENTS (SUCH AS SPELLING OF WORDS), CONCRETE REFERENTS (THOSE DESCRIBABLE BY PICTURES), AND ACTION-PROCESS (CONTINUOUS ACTION SEQUENCES). CONTENT WAS HELD CONSTANT IN EACH EXPERIMENT. EQUIPMENT AND STUDENT SELECTION FACTORS WERE CAREFULLY CONTROLLED. IMMEDIATE POST-TEST SCORES ON FOUR DIFFERENT MEASURES WERE STATISTICALLY ANALYZED, AND SEVERAL SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIPS FOR SPECIFIC CONDITIONS EMERGED. HOWEVER, NO CONSISTENT PATTERNS OF SUPERIORITY FOR ANY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN VISUAL, AUDIO, OR PROGRAMING VARIABLES WERE DEMONSTRATED, WITH ONE EXCEPTION. FUTHERMORE, FEW CONSISTENT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PRESENTATION MODES AND LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS WERE FOUND. ONE MAJOR CONCLUSION OF THE EXPERIMENTS WAS THAT EVEN UNDER SELECTED CONDITIONS, A RELATIONSHIP COULD BE DEMONSTRATED BETWEEN CONTENT AND PRESENTATION MODE. (LH)